Iran’s enemies within

Dictators, having gotten so far by being ruthless, almost always have a fatal delusion about the power of brutality to protect their reign. So when they confront dissent, as they inevitably do, they have the tyrant’s faith that harsh repression will cleanse their domain of enemies.

But all it does is make many new ones.

Those who understand this phenomenon knew that the world hadn’t seen the last of the opposition movement that staged huge demonstrations in Iran last summer after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arranged to have the June 12 presidential election stolen for his benefit.

The Iranian regime put those demonstrations down in a typically iron-fisted, cruel fashion, relying, as thugs always do, on fear to suppress all future dissent.

But the opposition didn’t go away. It just went underground for a few months, licking its wounds, mourning its losses and waiting for a new opportunity to emerge. And the opponents knew that with so many Iranians sickened by the bloodshed and brutality they witnessed last summer, they’d have many more in their ranks when they did.

Now, the protesters in the hundreds of thousands are back in the streets of Teheran and many other places across Iran. The holy day of Ashura, for whatever reason, provided the impetus for massive demonstrations that have convulsed Iran once again. Dozens have been killed in the illegal anti-government rallies and more than 1,000 people have been arrested.

The dead include the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and those detained include the sister of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi and three of Mr. Moussavi’s chief lieutenants.

In terms of casualty count, the government is winning once again and the opposition has suffered grievously. And the regime still controls all the levers of power, including the governmental and security apparatus and the official media, as well as the nation’s foremost clerics.

But the opposition’s numbers are larger and growing and the regime is showing clear signs of desperation. The government has already staged counter-demonstrations featuring its loyalist goons who denounced the protests and declared that the “desecration” of the holy day of Ashura was orchestrated by “mohareb” — “enemies of God” — and therefore subject to the death penalty.

And President Ahmadinejad, always a loudmouth, has been particularly garrulous in his denunciations of supposed Western influence behind the demonstrations.

“The Iranian nation has seen many such plays,” he said at one point. “A play, the scenario of which has been written and financed by the Zionists and Americans with all its tickets already booked.”

Elsewhere, he declared, “I advise Mr. Obama and some European leaders to learn a lesson from the fate of their predecessors and do not think that by creating scenes and kicking up ballyhoos they can disturb the united ranks of Iranian nation.”

Those are the words of a desperate dictator staring at the imminent demise of his power. And all the indications are that the Iranian people are not buying any of it; that Ahmadinejad and the hard-line clerics are claiming outside agitation by Western conspirators in order to hang onto their own wavering supporters. They know that the opposition movement is entirely home-grown and isn’t going away. There is even evidence that some members of the police and military have gone over to the opposition. The regime’s most dangerous enemies are within.

Perhaps most important, the days when a dictatorship could impose a steel blanket of secrecy on its internal goings-on are long gone in the era of the Internet, cell-phone cameras, Twitter and the like. The images coming out of Iran, including police firing at demonstrators and driving trucks into crowds to run over protesters — clearly show repression — and this regime — at its worst. The whole world is watching.

There is an increasing sense of inevitability around all this. President Ahmadinejad and his thugs still have all the conventional means of official power, but the brave people of Iran taking to the streets have the power of numbers, and perhaps, history.